Rice, singing [on "Light Industry"] about “Bennie and the Jets and dreary weekend sex,” plays perfectly into the song’s hesitant mood. It’s the one moment on Gulp! where his audible exhaustion fits, a song that makes you wonder what the rest of the album would have be like if only the band could translate Rice’s weariness into something more suited to their strengths. Instead, Sports Team take a swing with Gulp! and barely make contact.

Entering Heaven Alive is seldom actively bad, but the most interesting component of either of White’s 2022 albums is that, well, there are two of them.

The third disc, annoyingly titled Kid Amnesiae, starts off promisingly enough with a straight piano version of “Like Spinning Plates.” ... Only four of the 12 tracks here stretch past four minutes, with the majority of them clocking in at under two. That would be excusable if these leftovers revealed anything about what it must have been like to be in the room while making a pair of classic albums.

It is an album that would make Tenacious D roll their eyes and make metal fans scratch their heads.

By track four, a whimsical-by-numbers reverie called “Dinosaurs on the Mountain,” American Head starts to fall off an American cliff. The tempos are slow enough to deflate even Coyne’s considerable charm, and the record’s rootsy, pastoral spin on the Lips’ sound is undermined by the band’s maximalist production ethos. Nearly every song is overstuffed with queasy synth textures and sleek, digitized strings, and Coyne can’t resist warping his vocals in a grab-bag of ugly processors.

The chillwave movement has always channeled nostalgia—warm echoes of a distant past, faded and warped into a new aesthetic. Purple Noon, though, mostly just elicits nostalgia for the glory days of chillwave itself.

Where A Brief Inquiry… excelled due to its exceptional pop songwriting and well-calculated sonic departures, Notes… is far too ambitious and self-aware (“Will I live and die in a band?”) for its own good.

Making a Door Less Open isn’t as memorable as its predecessors on its own: Toledo’s vision as a whole never feels truly fleshed out, representing the first legitimate misfire in the career of one of this generation’s most talented indie-rock songwriters.

Uneasy Laughter is fine. It’d be much better if it was either divorced from ruminations on honesty, or if the band actually managed to define themselves without leaning on ’80s nostalgia.

Where these two songs [“Darkseid” and “4ÆM”] burst with fervor, Miss_Anthropocene’s other tracks often stumble and limp.

It’s a record in total lust and fealty to Hailey; you’ll probably want to duck out to use the bathroom halfway through.

An album that needs a bit more of its own personality, but it’s sung with the confidence of someone who thinks they’ve got it all figured out.

Sitting through a slogging collage of beats for 40 minutes before ever hearing a verse is no easy task. It would be one thing if these tracks had a common theme holding them together, but there’s no central voice to bind one to the next. ... The only thing that will keep listeners pressing on is the star-studded back half of the record. The incredible amount of talent Shadow recruited is exciting.

High points feel scattered among a patchwork of pillowy piano tunes, conspicuous genre experiments and politically charged trial balloons. There are good things and not-so-good things here, but there is no cohesion in the overall work. Closer Than Together doesn’t hang together as a whole.

Even the bright spots in the album’s composition—the off-beat piano cascades in “Death By A Thousand Cuts” and the pulsating synth of “Cruel Summer” (thank you, St. Vincent) are particular standouts—are overshadowed by the musical anticlimax on most tracks, especially on “The Archer.”

What’s disappointing about A Fine Mess is not just that the songs are unremarkable but also that they don’t deviate from the band’s usual approach in any notable way. There are no oddball experiments here, no genre strays, no real risks to speak of. There are just five more songs that sound a lot like Interpol, for fans for whom that is always enough.

Throughout Father of the Bride, a record with half-baked political commentary (“Something’s happening in the country / And the government’s to blame”) and lazy wordplay (“All I do is lose but baby / All I want’s to win”), it feels as if Koenig turned away from what made his band so great in the first place, instead electing to adopt a sound that doesn’t necessarily fit him, one that comes off as derivative and frequently boring.

Not everything has to be pure pop, but nothing else on Brutalism even comes close to sounding like a complete song the way [“Body Chemistry”] does.

Other artists, such as Florence and the Machine are creating better, more interesting music with the same techniques. Seek them out instead of wasting your time on this one.

The end result is an incredibly inoffensive album, one that’s perfectly lovely without offering any striking new ideas or features that make it memorable.

The whole album sounds like it was recorded to be played in an H&M. It’s bland and forgettable, fuzzed with a faux-depth like an Instagram filter.

Sometimes Romano manages to pull off an unexpected success: a repeating thinly strummed acoustic guitar chord and quavering vocals at the start of “Empty Husk” eventually build to a catharsis of overdriven electric guitars and a vibrant melody. More often, though, these tunes just idle.

It’s a recipe for Joyce Manor at their slickest power pop yet, even as it lacks the narrative depth we’re used to.

Tatum and his collaborators nailed the sounds, but they don’t come close to finding tunes that resonate.

Dawes’ latest may well sound fresh and new, or at least vaguely soulful, if you don’t know it’s a retread, but Passwords is all too easy to crack, and what’s inside isn’t really worth protecting when others have been doing it all better for decades.

The two started jamming together and the songs evolved organically. Before the duo knew it, they had an album’s worth of songs. And that’s basically what the album sounds like--two guys of a certain age doing stuff they think is really cool that only winds up being cool to guys of a certain age.

With no dramatic tension, pathos or even story arc, these songs are little more than piles of slack words from an artist who has confused saying whatever comes to mind with having something to say.

It’s not terrible, it’s mostly pleasant to listen to, it’s beautifully produced and it’s easy to recognize the skill it takes to craft their saintly, synth-driven sound. But when you couple a critical reputation like theirs with the band’s own claim of making a big artistic jump, mostly pleasant to listen to shouldn’t cut it.

This time, there are a couple of solid songs surrounded on all sides by wandering experiments which never quite form into a whole.

Mmost frustrating about this album are the shades of old Morrissey.

It’s just a shame that what lies behind dozens of layers of metaphorical shrouds, isn’t a bit more poetic and interesting.

Unfortunately, Everybody Knows is the sound of two classic artists playing the 18th hole of their intertwined and decorated careers.

he vocals are gorgeous and Carlos plays with restraint and taste throughout. Unfortunately, such moments of inspiration are rare, as most of the songs reflect a project that struggles to find a place to stand.

The first nine tracks of the record, referred to as Death, are solid, listenable, weirdo rock that fans, or anyone who appreciates creative music could enjoy. ... Two minutes into “Cradboa Negro,” the last track of the Death portion of the record, it all starts going south. The subsequent 14 tracks of Love, aside from some funny song titles like “Chicken Butt” and “The Asshole Bastard,” are utter baloney.

For being one of the first big punk albums in post-Trump America, Wolves doesn’t howl nearly enough and rarely shows its fangs.

For a 14-track album that feels interminably long at only 44 minutes, three songs is not enough to save L.A. Divine from sustained mediocrity.

It’s an occasionally comical throwback to when they were at their biggest, with a few good-not-great moments. One can only hope they chill out and come up with something better in a few years.

Dirty Projectors, his self-titled rebirth, is therapeutic and at times frustratingly insular, full of dazzling and meticulous electronic textures that bely the melancholia underneath.

The band’s latest is a slight improvement, though the self-indulgence and lack of focus are still in evidence.

Electronic music edges ever so slowly toward nausea, a tendency to turn music into math. The best artists fight this with loving restraint. Bayonne is close to the mark, but there might be a few times when you reach for the volume and just say “enough” with the looping. Then there are times when it does work, as on the song “Spectrolite” with a heavier emphasis on analog instruments.

AlunaGeorge have always been smooth, but here they sound soft, the glitches debugged, their quirks edited out.

AIM isn’t nearly as ambitious. It’s just busywork, M.I.A. watching the clock, scanning the news, occupied, but idle.

Alongside its distracting flaws, True Sadness contains some truly beautiful music--and a good measure of the joyous energy that The Avett Brothers employ to transcendent effect live--but there’s no guiding principle here, resulting in a dizzy mess of an album that doesn’t live up to the band’s talents.

While intimate and personal in nature, Piano combines minimalistic instrumentation with simplistic lyrics and makes for an album that turns lackluster as a whole.

There’s some beautiful string parts, synth that rolls off sullenly into a distant horizon, and a pretty mean glockenspiel on “For You Always,” but the vocals ruin it. They don’t fit at all. It makes the album hard to swallow in the end, like an amazing deep dish pizza covered in green onions.

It sounds a bit like you took Captain and Tennille (or at least Captain) and down-sampled their music, ran the vocals through a pipe organ, and then shot one of their hits (say, “Muskrat Love” or “Love Will Keep Us Together”) full of amphetamines.

Chaosmosis, though full of small pleasures, will undoubtedly go down as a minor work in the Scream discography. Primal Scream’s best records dissolved genres together like potions; Chaosmosis seems happy just to ride out the groove.

Painting With is a record that just “is,” not very noteworthy, the band nowhere close to fulfilling its potential.

All in all, Sunflower Bean stripped away more than was necessary. The blunt truth is that the refreshing and energizing band that birthed “Tame Impala” and “Rock & Roll Heathen” just didn’t show up to the Human Ceremony recording sessions.

There are glimpses of vitality on Hymns, but The Spirit is flaky.

Curve of the Earth isn’t a complete rebound--there are too many fumbles, too many eye-rolls. But in its fits of brilliance, Mystery Jets reclaim their throne as rock’s savviest copycats.

In spite of its melodic clarity, Drones ultimately succumbs under the weight of its narrative, which strains for political and social commentary but winds up closer to parody.

There’s no deviating from this formula as 1000 Palms is a disappointingly reclusive step for a band whose once-bright star might have finally stopped flickering.

The Pinkprint has moments. Some are great, but most are not.

Taiga is an attempt at putting what it is that’s personal--vocals and lyrics--in the forefront, which is important, but it’s banished a mood and kind of mystery from everything.

Tyranny plays out like an album-length version of that epic song, stumbling upon moments of success in the way that a drunk dart player hits a bullseye every once in a while.

For an album that focuses on the theme of love, it’s really hard to find anything to swoon over on I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss.

He set out to depict the pains of contemporary Chicago, but he ended up just making another Common album.

It could have been--and should have been--a much better listen with the talent these three ladies possess. Unfortunately, it never quite jells.

Barfod has more faith in his electronics, and when he’s playing something he trusts, he permits the songs to venture out and reach greater emotional heights. But that comfort doesn’t extend to his human players, and his hesitation to let go and explore permeates the album.

The result is one of the more confidently presented, mostly inoffensive and ultimately inconsequential albums in recent memory.

The bottom line is, these guys have always just wanted to rock, and Himalayan is the first album that doesn’t let them.

Its coda features a lone, breathy synth that unfurls like a tattered flag planted high atop a snow-covered peak, and, like the band’s best work, the song is comparable to little else in the pop/indie landscape—a far cry from the tepid feel that permeates too much of this Mess.

The crux is the album’s smothering, reverb-heavy, more-is-more production style, which smooths over some of the off-kilter quirks that made Torches’ sprawl so alluring.

Tough Age’s self-titled debut has its moments, most of them falling in the album’s front third.

That’s the case overall for Blazing Gentlemen, which too often comes off like a rote exercise instead of an inspired undertaking.

On the heels of 2011’s critically hailed D, Corsicana Lemonade is a plain, uninspiring disappointment.

Technical proficiency is overrated. Taste has to account for something, which means Eminem isn’t the Jimi Hendrix of hip hop. Instead, he’s in danger of becoming Yngwie Malmsteen: incredibly agile yet musically soulless. He says a lot of nothing on MMLP2, but I guess you can admire the way he says it.

Essentially, the cruise control is running onward with disregard for all the maintenance and repairs that an engine needs, and the result is the worst album of their career.

Glow & Behold is never shrill or musically obnoxious, but it’s obnoxious how dull it is.

just as the sequel-ness inherently implies, faithfulness to their past work sinks Event II, as just the sound and goals of the album seem out of place in 2013 and overly nostalgic, without adding much to the conversation that seemed long finished.

Even if the whole thing isn’t world-upheaving. Those standalone tracks make it worth a whirl.

Unfortunately, they miss and it lands in the five-day-old dregs of a keg in an Anytown, USA backyard.

MGMT chokes on its own forced sense of whimsy.

On Beal’s first album, he moved between child-like ambience, songs suitable for weird film scores and stomping blues.

It wants to be The Antlers as a singer/songwriter, but even The Antlers walk dangerously close to the edge of good taste. Remiddi’s voice is no help, either, often times too delicate and dainty to extract much emotion from, and only convincing when it flaunts imperfections.

[The] familiarity brings you to the cereal, the soap and the market, and some people will be drawn to Be, okay with seeing the imitation. The rest are better holding off for Oasis’ inevitable reformation.

The ideas behind Weight have some potential, but Editors can’t seem to pull them off successfully.

On Astro Coast Pitts stared at the bright, unwritten future in front of him, but on Pythons he’s locked in place, rendered motionless by the oppressive chip on his shoulder.

Even Dream’s production, which was voluptuously orchestrated, has turned static; there’s an ashen militarism to be heard in these slow, sad songs.

There’s a genuinely evocative album buried under the obnoxiousness.

English Little League, like most of Pollard’s crop from the past decade, holds a few really great tracks, but is mostly missable.

Little is bad, but little is memorable or exciting or even interesting.

The man formerly known as Jonny Corndawg paints a richly redneck milieu--a greasy truck stop, a married woman’s disheveled bed, a backyard littered with post-debauchery debris--but something about the way he wallows in that white-trash decadence is offputting, even a little ugly.

These are lifeless non-revelations married to engrossing tunes.

In its song choices, if not necessarily in its treatments, Run for Cover is more ambitious than it needs to be--than it should be, in fact.

What we're left with is an EP full of hollow gestures. But at least it's an EP instead of an LP.

The record feels akin to 40 minutes of stoned stargazing in a college dorm room. And the kid down the hall has yet to add substance to the conversation.

All but a few tracks could be touted as a single, though in the same breath, it is hard to pick a standout from them, their defining moments tied to a choice on their pedal board.

Free Energy can put a damn pop hook together--problem is the execution.

Trouble Man is less senile in general than "Hello," but for too many of the album's 71 minutes, we listen in horror as T.I., 32, tries flaccidly to get down with the kids.

When Finally Rich works (and it often does), it's thanks to everyone other than Chief Keef.

Other Worlds is an immersive, expansive listen, filled with warm electro-dub grooves and plenty of ear-tickling headphone details--but it can also be a snooze.

Everything about this record is a shame: it explores new creative territory, the rhyming is solid and syntactically delightful (Big Boi's pronunciations are always more quotable than his lines), and it's a deserving outcast trying to make good as one-record-every-two-years lifer. And it simply does not work.

Tonally, however, Bish Bosch offers nothing dramatically new, just (a lot more) of what Walker's done before.

Their reach so far exceeds their grasp that all we can hear is the rift between their ambitions and their abilities.

Put Your Sad Down is full of great ideas--it's the execution that's often shaky.

On "Lazy Bones," that confessional spirit adds urgency to the band's power-chord crunch. Elsewhere, though, there's a troubling lack of focus.